Dear Esteemed Readers,
I was recently on the phone with another published author who was trying to convince me that he would do absolutely anything—whatever it takes—to have a big success in the storytelling worlds of publishing and Hollywood. This is a person I admire. He’s smart, talented, and hardworking. Even better—he’s loyal, kind, and generous. The type of man for whom it is exceedingly easy to root. In the past two years, I’ve grown to care about this person quite a bit.
In an earlier conversation, he had called me out for getting emotional whenever I discuss my Hollywood career.
He said something like, Most of what you say in our conversations sounds dead-on accurate, but whenever you talk about Hollywood, your voice changes and I have a hard time trusting what you’re saying.
The comment stung and I didn't initially understand why. But I thanked my friend for the feedback and said I would think about his observation. After I did, I was grateful for his honesty.
Why did the tone of my voice change whenever I talked about my Hollywood experience?
It was an interesting question to explore. I have a few hypotheses. Mostly, those are about childhood trauma both fueling my rise and putting me in contact with others who have had even more traumatic childhoods. People seeking fame and fortune are often driven by similar demons. But the specifics of those tales aren’t related to the point of what I’m trying to convey in this here post.
During the later follow-up conversation, my friend went on to say that I’d already had my mountain-top experience, when it came to the Oscars and The New York Times bestseller list. He was eager to have his mountaintop experience—to see for himself what was up there.
As I listened, I thought about the night I had taken Alicia to see John Mellencamp play a small-venue concert in Norfolk, VA, several years ago. He’s one of my wife’s favorite musicians, so I sprung for second-row seats, which—to my surprise and delight—were much more reasonably priced than I had anticipated. Even in his sixties, Mellencamp gave a tremendous performance. Alicia and I danced and sang and felt like the young hopeful eighties kids we once were, trying to hold onto sixteen for as long as we possibly could. We had a blast. But the two things I remember most about that night were actually kind of sad.
At one point, Mellencamp’s band exited the stage, leaving him all alone with an acoustic guitar. The aging rocker frowned and said something like, “I’ve been playing this next song for a long, long time.” Then he did an obligatory, half-hearted performance of Jack & Diane. The crowd went wild. Mellencamp seemed to wince at every hand clap and each singalong note. Alicia and I were maybe only six feet away from him, so we could clearly read his facial expressions. He did not want to play that song.
I’ve read on-line that Mellencamp doesn’t think Jack & Diane works with a live band. I’ve also read that he originally wrote the song about an interracial couple, but the record company made him change the lyrics. He had to compromise to make that record, and, yet, it’s the one that sent him skyrocketing toward fame and fortune. The price of admission perhaps. I won’t pretend to know exactly what was going on in the rock star’s head while he was playing his “little ditty” on that Norfolk stage, but it seemed quite clear to me that the performance the audience liked best that night was the one Mellencamp seemed to enjoy least.
Surprisingly, what I enjoyed most that evening was Mellencamp’s rendition of his much-lesser-known song, Longest Days, which I had never even heard before attending that concert. I remember him introducing the tune, saying that he had gotten the chorus from his grandmother. Then he sang the relatively unknown song with heart-breaking passion. The rendition felt intimate, honest, and even confessional.
Here’s the lyric that struck me hardest:
So you tell yourself, I’ll be back up on top someday. But you know there’s nothing waiting up there for you anyway.
As I was talking to my writing friend on the phone, I realized that maybe he needed to get to the top of Success Mountain, whatever that meant in his mind, if only to understand that there is nothing up there. Nothing worth anything on the soul level, anyway. All of that was already inside of him. He already had soul treasure in abundance. We all do. But most of us waste so much time looking elsewhere.
Remembering the free-and-clear look of truth on Mellencamp’s face when he sang Longest Days just a few feet in front of my wife and me, I suddenly found myself being a little bit confessional with my friend on the phone.
“You know,” I said, “when I was at the height of my alcoholic days, back in my thirties, I used to tell myself that I would either become a New York Times bestselling author or I would kill myself. I believed it, too. It was either make it or die. And that sick mind frame generated a tremendous amount of fuel, which I used to propel my career as far as it could possibly go. To do all that, I had to silence a lot of competing voices inside of me—maybe even the healthiest ones. I pushed them all deep down into the darkness of my unconscious. I had to drink a tremendous amount of alcohol to numb the old untended hurts. And I just don’t have the drive for that type of masochism anymore. I guess maybe I’d rather be sane and healthy than sick and successful. I’m trying to find a way to be healthy and successful now, but I think that effort will ultimately lead me in a much different direction. The healthier I get, the less exterior ‘success’ I seem to be having. I’m really starting to be okay with that. I want to be mentally well. And when I was riding that Hollywood and bestseller wave, I felt pretty unstable.”
Then I said I liked talking with my friend about his and my thoughts and problems, because I feel I can be honest with him and that he is always willing and ready to offer a fair exchange—meaning he will let me be me and I will let him be him and we will both celebrate each other. And we will also speak our minds.
I told my friend I wished him success. Of course, I want his work to find a large audience. But being willing to do anything to make ‘success’ happen had taken me down the wrong path. I’d met others who were spectacularly more successful than I had been, but seemed twice as miserable behind the scenes. My friend seemed to already have happiness and contentment whenever he wasn’t talking about having a “big success.” In my view, he was already winning at life.
Discontentment drives most creatives, but it’s also what ruins lives and even takes some.
I love Ernest Hemingway’s prose, Sylvia Plath’s poetry, and Kurt Cobain’s music—but I don’t think I would have wanted to be any of those people. Not even for a minute.
Back in my drinking days—or my slow suicide years—I was mostly trying to figure out how to become whatever others wanted or needed me to be. I think all that helped me climb Success Mountain. But in many ways, I was temporarily king of Nothing Mountain, which largely existed in my own drunken mind. And that is a fate I do not wish on anyone, especially people with whom I am friends—which is maybe why I had gotten emotional with my writing buddy in the earlier conversation. He’s a good man. I don’t want him to get trapped in the dark places that imprisoned me for many years.
Of course, my friend is not me and he is on his own unique journey. He needs to go wherever his soul requires him to go, so that he will contribute and acquire knowledge and grow. We all need to do that. If we really want to experience life, no one can save us from our fates. And my friend now has a brawny drive for commercial success. I won’t pretend to understand the mystery of that. As I glide by my seven-hundredth hour of Jungian analysis, I’m still working out my own intense relationship with success in the material world—all while I continue to wrestle with my psychological complexes.
As my friend and I spoke on the phone the second time, I felt the truth of what I was saying and it calmed me. Instead of pushing healthy voices down, I was letting the mentally well voices rise and enter into the world. I was telling my truth. I was letting my friend know exactly who I am—owning all of my complicated psyche, even the parts my friend does not trust. I was not trying to please him. I was just letting him see the real me and trusting him with his own life task of bringing forth and being the real him. I noticed that the emotion had left my voice, which was now calm and sure.
And I thought, This conversation I’m having right now with a human being I care about is much more gratifying than any pitch, notes, or promotional conversation I have ever had with Hollywood players. The man I am on the phone with is not going to provide me with income or access. But he has spoken up and called me out with goodwill in his heart, giving me a chance to wrestle with all of the above in a safe place. He is offering me an opportunity to figure out who I am. He is helping me plot a route up Matthew Quick Mountain.
After that Norfolk concert, I did an even deeper internet dive into John Mellencamp. I remember him saying somewhere that he would never again write another hit song, and he seemed more than fine with that. If I ever had the chance to speak with him, I’d ask if he was actively refusing to write a hit song because he didn’t have to—meaning he could still write one, but his earlier financial success made it unnecessary? Or had he changed so much—maybe even evolved—that it was no longer possible for him to compromise with the record company and the collective’s whims in order to produce “a hit”?
It’s interesting to think about the words ‘a hit’ being used to describe both a successful song and the inhalation or consumption of recreational drugs. When the audience craves ‘a hit,’ are willing performers just feeding an addiction? Getting their listeners high? Are the biggest ‘hits’ just dopamine boosts for the masses? And if so, would you ever really want to be the drug of millions? Just providing ‘hits’ for people who don’t really care about ever getting to know the real and true you?
I still wish my writing friend massive success. I just hope he doesn’t have to go to such extremes as doing ‘anything’ to get it. I hope success will spring from him being who he is meant to be. I hope that he will prioritize his mental health and allow his soul to lead him wherever he needs to go. And if he should ever find himself getting emotional while talking about a touchy subject, I hope he’ll be lucky enough to also be in the company of a safe friend who will give him the constructive feedback he needs and the conversational freedom to work it all out in real time—just like he had done for me.
I keep writing words myself, of course, here almost seven years deep into sobriety. I’m trying very hard to appreciate the rich mystery of my own psyche—even when the rest of the world is not paying attention. I’m no longer splitting my career into success or failure—being the best or being literally dead. There are many degrees in between conquering the commercial storytelling world and being so ashamed that you don’t want to exist anymore. And I’m eager to find the place where I can offer something meaningful without having to compromise my soul.
Give Longest Days by Mellencamp a listen. It’s a beautiful song. It feels true.
Everything we need is already inside. There are external things we all have to do to survive in the material world, of course, but there’s nothing out there that will complete any one of us. Wholeness is an inside job. I’m believing that more and more.
What does the true route up Mountain You look like?
Your man in the Lowcountry,
Matthew
PS - Did you read the March 25th post? Meeting A Frenchman in Old Beaufort On Christmas Eve Day (Flow With Instead Of Against)